Part 12

First, always followed by an admiring and gaping crowd, ’twas up and down the formal Walks somewhat sedately, for the masquerade, as has been said before, was at that period but just coming into vogue, and fine ladies and gentlemen were, at the outset of an evening, not as easy in their disguises as they became after a promenade in the unaccustomed duds; then, they formed a circle of mysterious appearance around the orchestra; then, ’twas into the Room to stare at the pictures through the peepholes of their masks; then a rush to gaze at the Cascade, which the whole of them, save Lady Peggy, Sir Robin and the Vicar, had seen a hundred times before; later, ’twas up and down the Walks again; and here Sir Robin at last made bold, having long since joined himself and the somewhat reluctant Vicar to a group of the Beau’s company, to address a few words, as it chanced, to the lively Lady Biddy O’Toole!

It had seemed to him, after a careful survey of all, and having been able, by dint of his ears, to learn which was Kennaston, whose was the only personality so far in his possession, that Lady Biddy’s arch turn of the head was the most like to belong to the object of his passion. So up he springs, mincing, leaving the Vicar to huddle in the shade, and, pulling Her Ladyship’s mask-riband with a twitching finger and thumb, as he had seen others do just now, he said, very low, in her ear:

“I’m sure I know who Your Ladyship is!”

“Out with it,” says she, very low too.

“It’s she whose image is writ on my heart,” answers he.

“Sure,” answers she, “that’s a thing that can never be known until you’re dead, and maybe not as soon, since the surgeons don’t cut up everybody! Lud, Sir, give me your name, and we’ll talk of your heart anon.”

“I am Sir Robin McTart of Robinswold, Kent,” exclaims he, feeling positive that this saucy minx is none other than his adored, for be it remembered Lady Biddy spoke under her breath and with a disguised tone to her voice.

“’Od’s blood!” now whispers Her Ladyship, with an accent of mock terror, into Sir Robin’s ear. “You! the highwayman! the cut-throat! the robber! what, I’ve heard, sticks gentlemen in the back, or has your men do it for you, and profits by that same!” laughing fit to kill herself.

But the little man does not laugh; the cold sweat stands out all over his sallow countenance, and he’s so terrified, recalling the threats of Mr. Bloksey, that he stands stock-still, and really can not move a leg.

They are nigh the Dark Walks as Sir Robin comes to his halt, and Lady Biddy, not pausing even to note his silence, goes merrily on with her most apt discourse.

“Oh,” proceeds she, “but you are the hero of the day, Sir Robin, and it’s myself that’s proud to be in your company, and faith! I’d like to have died running to see you hang on Saturday last!”

“Hang!” gasps he, getting back the use of his voice, but not of his shaking legs. “Saturday last!”

“Don’t be that bashful, Sir Robin, making as if you’d never heard of such before!” And Lady Biddy gives the Baronet’s cloak a playful tweak. “Lud, Sir! you and Sir Percy de Bohun’s the two most talked about, of all the bucks in town!”

“Sir Percy de Bohun!” repeats he, his knees knocking together.

“Sure’n didn’t he save you from the gibbet? Oh, go-along with you, Sir Robin, you can’t palaver Lady—”

“Lady who?” he contrives to ejaculate, struck nearly dumb at this mention of his rival, while Lady Biddy now bridles and is mute.

“You are Lady Peggy Burgoyne, are you not?” he goes on more softly, bending toward his companion, and concluding at last that the Lady’s words must have been the mere hap-hazards of a sparkling disposition.

Now Lady Biddy, in common with other ladies of fashion and moving in certain high circles of society, had heard a deal of the mysterious and all unseen Lady Peggy. She well knew the supposition that was rife as to Lady Peggy’s being secretly the wife of Sir Robin McTart. She knew from her bosom friend, Lady Diana Weston, who had the same most direct from her suitor, Lord Kennaston, Lady Peggy’s own twin-brother, that his sister was from home, unknown her whereabouts to father or mother, kith or kin, maid or man, save that she was “up in London”; that Sir Percy de Bohun was mad for love and loss of her; that her brother, had he not been in like case by means of Lady Diana, would long since have made public search, as he was indeed making such privately, for the discovery of the eloping Fair. She likewise was aware that Sir Robin frequented the gay world, was not adverse to ogling a lady, as she herself could testify; stopped at Mr. Brummell’s house; and, albeit ’twas said had fought a duel with Sir Percy because of Lady Peggy, still did not absent himself from any rout, ridotto, or ball, on her always absent account.

So, equipped with such a fund of knowledge and any amount of surmise, Her Ladyship replied coyly beneath her mask:

“Why do you think so, Sir Robin, and pray if I were Lady Peggy, what, now, would you be afther saying to me?”

“Zounds! ’tis she!” exclaims the Baronet, carried away by the fact that Lady Biddy’s hand beneath her cloak has more than half-way met his own moist and trembling fingers.

“Loveliest of women! Oh, ’twas indeed by your express directions, was’t not, that Mr. Incognito on Monday, watching for me in High Holborn nigh the shop of Mounseer Jabot, bid me come here to-night to meet you?”

Lady Biddy, although much averse to the clammy touch of her cavalier, gives his fingers an assuring pressure.

“Why, oh, why!” pursues Sir Robin, now as much elated by this tacit confession of her passion for him, as he was but lately overwhelmed by the mention of such strange words as “hanging, highwayman, Sir Percy de Bohun,” etc., etc., “why have you seen fit to keep me in such a length of suspense? Why have I not been allowed, before this, to behold you, and renew the days of our sojourn in Kent? Speak, my angel, speak!”

“La, Sir!” murmurs Lady Biddy, minx-like, ever anxious to get at the heart of this now much deepened enigma, “la, Sir, do you not know but too well the whys and wherefores of my secrecy?” Her Ladyship from Cork actually squeezes the little Baronet’s crooked little hand.

“That do I not! Mr. Incognito never would tell me aught, but thus and so; and bade me, from your adorable lips, keep myself in seclusion and safety,—nor ever,” continues he, his tone sinking to a mere breath, “endanger my precious self,” now stooping to imprint a chaste kiss on Her Ladyship’s hand, “in the meeting even once of Sir Percy de Bohun, for he had sworn to kill me on beholding me. Dearest life,” proceeds Sir Robin, withdrawing Lady Biddy a bit into the shade of the great trees, “I have obeyed your commands. I have never set eyes upon the scoundrel, but have kept myself close housed at my inn in Pimlico, awaiting your dear pleasure.”

“Have ye?” murmurs Lady Biddy, now more bewildered than she ever was before in her life, and seeing no clear way, either to read the puzzle or, truth to tell, to elude the gentleman. Yet the wits of a lady, especially if she happen to have been born in Ireland, may usually be trusted to extricate her from almost any dilemma; therefore, when Sir Robin has done swearing of his impatient probation passed at the Puffled Hen, says she, tweaking her hoop and making a courtesy:

“Lud! Robin,” (the hussy!) “but you are a killing creature! Nay, nay!” drawing out a few steps, he after her, from the shade of the trees and more in the flare of the twinkling globe lamps. “Nay, tarry here but a moment; there are the same reasons for your not accompanying me now that have prevailed upon me to keep our matters secret hitherto. I pray you, stir not from the neighborhood of this wooden lion—see?—until I return, which I will do presently.”

“Faith!” cries the Baronet, “I’ll not budge, my divine Peggy! until you are once more at my side!” and with a horrid leer through his peepholes, he essays to take Lady Biddy’s hand once more, but she’s off, balking him.

Quick as thought, she scampered across to the edge of the orchestra, where she discovered a group of masks and among ’em one, whom, by the rose pinned to her bloom-colored bodice, she knew to be Lady Diana, and she made certain that two of the three bloods near her, canes dangling at their button-holes, must be Sir Percy and Lord Kennaston.

“Hist!” exclaims Lady Biddy, panting partly from speed, partly from the fright a lady alone might experience in running the gauntlet of so many macaronis and fops, not to speak of thieves and pickpockets, as perforce was the case in progressing about Vauxhall.

“What is’t Biddy, for I know you by your silver heels,” answers Lady Di. “Mischief, I’ll dare be sworn, or it’s not you! Speak your mind; there’s none here but what can keep a secret, and the whole of us have been a-watching you with some one, fie! at the entrance to the Dark Alleys.”

“Is Sir Percy here? Is this he?” whispers Biddy.

Sir Percy bows, for he is there; while the other two gentlemen, inferring from her tone that she seeks a private ear, instantly withdraw to one of the boxes for a glass of Burgundy to refresh their spirits.

“I’ve news for you, of one you’re a-dyin’ for, of Lady Peggy Burgoyne!” exclaims she triumphantly.

“What! What!” comes simultaneously from behind each of the masks she addresses.

“Aye; I’m after learning from, whom, think you?”

“Proceed, for the love of God, Madam!” says Percy, very low.

“From him that’s supposed to be her husband, Sir Robin McTart, that mistook me for her,” Biddy titters, “that she’s here to-night by an appointment with him, made by a trusted servant of hers, called 'Mr. Incognito’; sent to meet Sir Robin before the shop of Monsieur Jabot in Holborn; and he’s not seen Her Ladyship,—I mean Sir Robin’s not seen her since they were sojourning in Kent together! and there’s a mystery for you! And I made excuses and left him a-standin’ by the lion, for I could no longer contain the news, but must run back to him now to extract the rest of it. Pray heaven, Lady Peggy herself comes not by, and lets out that I was not she at all, at all!”

“Good God!” murmurs Percy under his breath, as Biddy rattles on. “Can this thing be? and what does it all mean?”

Restraining Lady Biddy, both he and Lady Diana endeavor to quiet her abounding spirits, and to gain from her the detailed account of her encounter with Sir Robin. Percy, in the midst of her voluble tongue and her giggling, striving to form some plan of action which shall this night bring matters to the touch between himself and the Baronet and leave one or t’other of ’em stiff and stark.

Meantime, Sir Robin, with greedy eyes fixed on Lady Biddy, so long as he can see her, and until she and her companions withdraw into a box, stands as if at one with the wooden lion; presently, however, his gaze is diverted hither and yon, not only by the playful and engaging remarks of various young ladies who challenge his mask in the most direct and obliging fashion, but by a certain Figure which he beholds moving about aimlessly, it would seem, and alone, beneath the dark shadows of the trees toward the river.

There is something in this Figure’s motions, although cloaked and masked,—therefore, the Baronet notes, one of Mr. Brummell’s party,—which strikes him as familiar, and when, presently, the unknown lifts mask and reveals the countenance behind it, Sir Robin sidles up, one eye on the wooden lion of his tryst, however, and plucking Lady Peggy by the arm, says:

“Ho! Mr. Incognito!”

Peggy turns, and betwixt disgust, dismay, horror, and amusement, remains silent.

“’Tis I, Sir, Robin McTart,” lifting his own mask a trifle to assure his companion of his identity.

“Soh!” returns she, “I do perceive.”

“Oh, Mr. Incognito, what do I not owe to your being in My Lady’s employ! She is indeed here.”

Her Ladyship, taking this for a question, answers thus, with emphasis: “Yes, she’s here—indeed.”

“I have seen her,” sighs the little Baronet, leaning his head, just exactly the height of Her Ladyship’s own, down on Peggy’s shoulder in an excess of sensibility.

“Have you?” exclaims she, not daring to stir in the embarrassment of believing it possible that the scoundrel has discovered her identity.

“Oh, yes,” sighs Sir Robin, “I have received a pressure, nay two of ’em, from her hand. I’ve kissed her fingers; I await her return to meet me at the wooden lion yonder.”

“Do you?” says Lady Peggy, mystified beyond everything. “Did she look as you expected her to?”

“Ah!” gasps Sir Robin, “she has not yet lifted her mask for me to behold her countenance, but when she returns, I shall beseech her for one glimpse!”

“Ah!” returns Peggy, now fully persuaded that some one has been making a jest of her companion, but none the less disquieted on her own score.

“Hark ye, Sir Robin,” says she, “you have ever found my counsels wise. Be advised by me now; leave Vauxhall at once. Lady Peggy Burgoyne is not safe, so long as you tarry here.”

The little Baronet, doughtily, although trembling, puts his hand to his hilt.

“Nay, Sir!” continues Peg, “your weapon would not avail for her preservation. She leaves town this very night for Kennaston. Do you the same, nor risk detection longer here.” Her Ladyship uses the word advisedly, and has the satisfaction of seeing Sir Robin shiver with terror, then steady again as he reflects that Her Ladyship’s fears can but be in connection with her own escapade; since, ’tis plain from all he can spy and eavesdrop, not a soul as yet has missed Sir Percy de Bohun from his accustomed haunts.

“But she swore me she’d be back in a few moments, Mr. Incognito, and ’sdeath! Sir!” perceiving Lady Biddy emerging from the box and advancing toward the lion alone, “there she is!”

Off and away Sir Robin McTart to join his Fair, while Lady Peggy, screened by the increasing shadows, for the dripping lamps are one by one, by this, dying down in their globes, beholds one—she devines not which—of Beau Brummell’s lady guests, courtesying and greeting the Baronet with her finger-tips.

Now My Lady’s heart’s a-thumping monstrous hard; she beholds, as well as Sir Robin and his supposed Peggy, two others—alas! she knows too well who they are, a-peeping out from the corner of the box-entrance whence Lady Biddy came just now, and watching her encounter with Sir Robin.

These are Lady Diana and Sir Percy.

Together? Aye and a-goin’ to be “together” for all their lives, she sadly thinks, both of them, quite forgetting, save perchance for a moment’s beguilement, her very existence. But it behooves her, if not for her own sake, of which she has come to the pass of recking but little, then for her father’s and mother’s, now to bid farewell forever to disguises, falsehoods, cheatings, man’s estate, and even the melancholy chance of seeing the countenance of Sir Percy. She will off presently, and reach home as best she may.

A few minutes, more or less, can make no odds, and ’tis but too true that Her Ladyship stood there in ambush of the branches in the vain hope that Percy might lift his mask, if but for an instant, and thus allow her parting gaze to rest upon his features.

It is quite true that mortals, although in never such haste to reach a desired crisis, still ofttimes halt at the threshhold of its attainment; so Her Ladyship, with now nothing to hinder her escape, still stood leaning against an oak, listless, but for the eager eyes fixed on the pair in the box entrance. These presently crossed into the throng and, joining others of the maskers, were lost to her view; but the Baronet and Lady Biddy had not been idle of their tongues this while.

Much simpering, angling for news, tittering, and a neat show of wit in the manner of plying a gentleman with questions on a matter about which he was quite ignorant, on the lady’s side; ardor, impatience, as much daring as his little spirit permitted, on the gentleman’s. Finally said he:

“Mr. Incognito says you start for Kennaston this very night, my dearest life, is’t so?”

“Tell me who is Mr. Incognito?” says she, “and I’ll answer you straight.”

“He’s your paid servant, sworn slave, and the bearer of all tender messages between us.—Now, go you to Kennaston to-night?”

“As sure as I’m Lady Peggy Burgoyne,” returns Biddy. “I start for home ere cock-crow!”

“I’ll follow you poste-haste, but,” cries Sir Robin, “loveliest of created beings, I beseech, I implore! one glimpse of your angelic countenance before we part—to meet only when I can claim you as my own!”

“No! No!” exclaims Biddy, restraining the Baronet’s hand which is laid upon the lutestring of her mask.

“But divine creature, I insist!” with one arm seizing the buxom Lady Biddy about the waist, while with the other he essays to untie the riband which hides her charms from view.

Then Lady Biddy O’Toole, whose lungs were of the best, let such a bawl as rang far up and down the Thames, causing a score of red-stockinged boatmen to leave their wherries and dash up the Gardens; causing every tongue in Vauxhall to cease clacking, every glass to jingle to its table, every echo to resound; every other lady there to shriek; the musicians to stop; the waiters to drop their trays; each gentleman to draw sword; and a vast number of persons of both sexes to shout:

“Watch! Watch! Murder! Thieves! Highwaymen!” and whatever else beside.

While a concourse of people of every condition at once closed in around Sir Robin and Lady Biddy, at the outside rim of which, shivering betwixt terror and that lively curiosity which overrides even a desire for personal safety, gaped the now unmasked Vicar of Friskingdean, unable to find his natural protector and sometime pupil in all this hurly-burly.

XV

_Wherein Sir Percy and Sir Robin come face to face, to the unfeigned amazement of each: and where My Lady takes to her heels and a wherry._

When Lady Diana and Percy quitted the box, he, after conducting her to the care of Lady Brookwood, strode off into the Dark Alleys, taking with him, not Kennaston, for the hopeless youth, flouted still by Diana, had gone a-mooning by the river’s bank, but a company of valiant and merry gentlemen all raised a bit by the partaking of the famous Vauxhall punch; and to them he confided sufficient of his reasons and intentions, as made plain their course to them as his friends, to do aught and all in their several powers toward the promoting of a quarrel betwixt him and Sir Robin McTart; whom, he would presently point out to them, as they should stroll, seeming careless, the length of the walk.

Thus, arm in arm, Sir Percy, Sir Wyatt Lovell, His Grace of Escombe, and Mr. Jack Chalmers, across the path, swaggering with sticks and tassels hanging, hats at a cock, perfumed with Venus oil, and most jocund of demeanor; with Beau Brummell behind ’em spying, waving his little muff, and chatting with Lord Wootton and one or two more gay sparks, all disporting themselves carelessly, but hilts eased for the drawing.

Just as they were nearing the wooden lion of Sir Robin’s tryst, Lady Biddy’s shriek assailed their ears, and Sir Percy, thanking Providence for so opportune an occurrence, which, not to say that it was in any way premeditated, yet continued to ring out louder and louder, even after Sir Robin had ceased to pull at her mask-string and stood, held fast in Her Ladyship’s stout grasp, the very center of a blaze of light from footmen’s flambeaux,—they and the masses pushing every way, screaming and cursing.

Into the thick of this mêlée dashed Sir Percy de Bohun, with his friends on either side of him.

But a moment sufficed for him to wrest the Lady from her assailant and to deliver her over to the care of Diana and the Duchess, who carried her swooning (whether with laughter or emotion ’twould be difficult to set down), to the Room.

In another second, taking his silver-fringed gloves from his pocket he threw them into the masked face of Sir Robin McTart.

The little Baronet, who had both temper and vanity, which brace now got the upperhand of his cowardice, and, believing that Lady Peggy’s eyes were upon him, that Sir Percy was at the bottom of the Thames, and with full foreknowledge that he could run away before the meeting could be arranged, caught the gloves as they struck and flung them back into their owner’s covered countenance.

“Take that! ’sdeath!” squeaked Sir Robin, now much the more valiant as he beheld the Vicar screwing his way toward him through the excited crowds.

“Unmask, and show yourself for who you are!” cried Percy, every one of his companions echoing:

“Unmask! Unmask! Unmask, or we’ll run ye!”

“Willingly,” responded the trembling gentleman from Kent, tugging at the slip-knot in his mask-string.

“I am Sir Robin McTart! Who, the devil, are you?”

“I am Sir Percy de Bohun!” replied his opponent, as both masks came off at the same instant, and the two confronted one another, staring with four eyes that fairly popped in their sockets.

’Twould be hard to say which of these two was the more astounded, although Sir Percy’s amazement had quite a different flavor from the Baronet’s abject terror.

“You! Sir Percy de Bohun!” he quavered, turning ashy pale. “I’ll not believe it. ’Tis a lie!”

“You! Sir Robin McTart!” replied Percy, hotly. “Gentlemen,” turning to his friends, “I pray you bear me out in this, not to the exclusion of my challenge of this impostor, which holds good until one or t’other of us sheds blood, but for the preservation of the honor of a valiant gentleman, who is not far off of us now. That this weazen wretch may meet his dues, for not only does he masquerade his face, but seeks to usurp the character and name of one whom we all know to be both handsome, brave and courageous.”

Percy’s blood runs high as he speaks these generous words, while every soul about him stands breathless, staring, struck dumb with the singularity of the episode.

“But I am Sir Robin McTart,” cries the Baronet, brandishing his weapon with a will, since there is none to oppose him, and the Vicar, now, although well-nigh choked, not above ten yards distant from him.

“Tut, tut, Sir, whoever you are,” interposed Lord Escombe. “Your game’s up, and you’d better give your lies a rest.”

“Hold!” cries Sir Percy to Robin, “whoever you are, I challenge you to fight me ten minutes hence, yonder in the open, towards the river, and those ten minutes my friends and I’ll spend in calling the actual Sir Robin McTart into your presence, and confronting your impudence with his reality. Lend me your lungs, My Lords and Gentlemen; Sir Robin’s in call somewhere in the Gardens as we all know.”

And with one accord the shout went up, ringing up and down the river and far across to the highway, where it caused the horse-patrol to think that every highwayman in the kingdom had broken loose upon Vauxhall, and presently brought them rearing, plunging, swearing, firing, thumping cutlasses right and left, into the midst of the surging thousands, by this all shouting:

“Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin McTart! Sir Robin! Sir Robin! Sir Robin McTart!” at the top of their voices.

But for all their bawling, no one answered, no one came, and but one of the vast throng went.